New Desks

My major project this first summer break is reorganizing my living room/office space in my home. I have completely ripped my front room apart, and there are things all over the floor at the moment. I have piles of things to donate, to put back on the shelves, and to repurpose. I have my new desks in place with the bookshelves keeping them stable, and I am putting things in places that seem to make the most logical sense. For example, all of the file folder assembly things are in the same place and on the same set of bookshelves under the creativity desk. The reference books, compact discs, and some of the boring writing utensils are on the shelves of the writing desk. My goal is to have everything I need for my various interests within easy reach no matter what I am doing. I am also trying to keep the top of the desk areas (hollow core doors) as empty as possible to encourage me to engage in work on these surfaces. 

At the moment, there is more stuff off shelves than on.

Eventually, that will not be the case, but I've hit the "I'm tired" phase of the project, so I am looking at the piles of stuff and am feeling a bit discouraged. This happens often around this time of break - there aren't very many days left so I am feeling a bit pressured to be getting back into a work frame of mind. 

The self-talk starts, "You really need to stop taking naps every day. Work is coming soon." "You should be working on your audacious project. It won't be finished in time." "Why do you have so much stuff?" "If only you didn't keep all this stuff, you wouldn't have to move it back and forth." Ugh. Time for some cognitive reframing.

I have to do this for myself quite often. I call it, "getting the rational brain to explain to the emotional brain." My process goes something like this...

"I should be...."

Why "should" you be doing something. Either do it or don't but telling yourself that you "should" implies feelings of guilt. Are you going to wallow in the guilt and shame, or are you going to actually do something about it?

"If only..."

 You made choices back then. No use in looking back. The situation is what it is. Deal with it.

 "Next time..."

Oh. This is a better frame of mind. I like the beginning of this statement, emotional brain. You are now becoming more like the rational brain.

It's time to go to work. I have a place to put all of my music books now, so that will clear up a bit more carpet space in my home. Once the music books are put away, I'll move my empty file cabinets to their new place in the room and then start to fill them back up. I've already purged them of contents that are no longer relevant to me. After all that, I will get some boxes out of my box closet and start filling them up with books for donations. I will take the confidential recycling to the UPS store (did you know that my store will shred anything for 50 cents per pound? That's a deal in my book!). I will take the rest of the recycling to the bin outside. My home will become more organized as I keep working. The end result will be a more organized space and a better knowledge of what I actually have tucked away in all these corners.

Enough writing (on my new writing desk!) - time to go to work.